Day 21: Working late

I'm still at it; I ran some errands during the day and started my writing at about 4pm. K is at gaming night, so it's just me and The Rogli here while I work.

I'm at a point in the story where a lot of the activity is going to be taking place on the overnight shift on the oncology ward at a hospital. Here's where research fails me; I can't seem to discover if it is quiet, noisy, busy, eerily inactive? I plan to visit an oncology ward once someone gives me permission to, but I don't imagine I'll be allowed to come on over at 2am.


I'm also trying to balance a blooming infatuation between two characters while one is seriously ill. I have some experience with this (not with cancer, but with major illness), and I can say, it would have taken ONE HECK of a guy to distract me from how craptacular I felt. I'm trying to work that fact in to the situation of the ill character, but it's hard when I need the plot to go this way.

Four chapters went out to K, Sue, Nicole and Nate...I'll be interested to see what they have to say. I'm on page 133 right now, two and a half pages into Chapter 6.

Days 19 and 20: A bit behind in blogging...

Friday got too crazy for me to post here; too much to do! These next few weeks are full of weddings, family plans, and a nice vacation to Cape Cod, all of which I've been looking forward to.

I hit page 130 today, and about 37K words. Chapter 5 has been a bit lumbering; I finished it today, and I made a bunch of notes for the start of Chapter 6. I expect all of this week's writing to be interrupted by errands to prepare for all of the good stuff coming up, but I'm going to try to stick at least to my original goal of 3.75 pages if not my new goal of 1500 words.

Beautiful day! The pup and I took a nice, long walk, and I tried not to get her too dirty since she just had a bath!

Day 18: A little late tonight...

Writing here a bit later than usual...I got caught up in some things that needed to get done this afternoon when I finished writing, including taking The Pup to my parents' house because I have to grade placement exams all day tomorrow (again). It was good to talk to N. on the phone tonight; she will be an important reader in all of this.

I wrote about four pages today (about 1200 words), and I finally incorporated all of the material leftover from the earlier draft. I actually printed out the first four chapters, and am now deciding whether or not I'm ready to send it to friends for their feedback. It's *definitely* a first draft, and flipping through it in actual print, I definitely see some parts that need to change (too contrived, too dramatic, etc.). But, knowing that, do I go back and edit the hell out of it before I send it to friends, or should I get their baseline opinions first? I'll decide tomorrow.

I'll be back on Friday with more from the novel zone.

Day 17: Derailed by Digestion

So, I didn't get as much done today as I'd have liked because my digestive system was not cooperating. I still feel oogy right now, actually, so this will be short. I wrote a bit over 3 pages (900ish words), and then tackled a bunch of errands that had been hanging over my head (prescriptions, the bank, the post office, etc., etc.).

I *did* get to eat my first nectarine of the summer, and I will continue my tradition from last year of eating a nectarine every single day until they go out of season; they are my favorite fruit, and one of the only ones I'm actually allowed to eat raw. I don't know if having eaten one is going to help or hurt my stomach; I can't tell if I'm hungry or queasy! I'm going to go watch my husband make a fake meatball sub and find out if it looks appetizing or not.

Day 16: Getting Down To Business

I wrote about seven pages today, or around 1800 words. I realized that in order to reach my summer's goal of around 120K words, I needed to step things up a bit in terms of productivity. So, I finished a little later, and got a lot more done. I wrote a 'turning point' scene today, one in which we figure out the way that the main characters are going to interact. The major problem of the novel has been put forth. It happens, novel-wise, about 80 pages in; I'll have to rely on my pre-readers to tell me if it happens too late. Not that there isn't interesting stuff before, it's just that a lot of questions begin to get answered at this point, rather than earlier on.

From now on, nothing in the novel is innocent; everyone's motivations have been exposed, and everything is going to continue to spiral toward the climax of the story. It's getting exciting, which is why I think it's getting easier to write more in one sitting. That and the new chair. Man is this thing comfortable.

Day 15: 100 Pages!

Today I reached 100 pages, which is a goal I had set for the middle of the month. It certainly feels good to be this productive, though I continue to hope that what I'm producing is actually good.
From now one, in terms of completion goals, I'm going to focus more on the number of words than on page numbers; my eventual goal for the whole novel is around 120K. I have about 30K right now.

I finished up a 'connective tissue' scene that actually needed to be longer than I originally thought. I also began what will turn out to be a fairly big, important scene, and will be the second-to-last thing that happens in Chapter 4.

Writing went a bit slower today; I think grading the placement tests threw me off my game a bit, but then I have to wonder if all Fridays are a little sluggish, even if you're doing work for yourself! I have a very sweet schnauzer here, who rests comfortably on the futon, looking out the window, and letting me write all day. I feel very lucky to have her.

Now, off to take care of a week's worth of dishes so that my husband and I can actually eat dinner tonight on plates.

Day 14: Light, if Disorganized

I wrote a 'connective tissue' scene today which serves as a buildup to a very important scene. It was easier than I thought to write, and I had my 3.75 pages done very quickly. I think the frequency of my writing is making the ideas come faster. I went back and read yesterday's sex scene, and it's still good, I think; it portrays how manipulative one of the characters is, and how putty-like the other one is.

I took some time yesterday and today to plan and order books for a couple of the classes I'm teaching this fall; I need to not totally forget that, while I *am* on vacation, I'm still being paid to have my sh*t together for next semester. Tonight I need to get a manuscript copy of my book of poems (unpublished) so I can send it out to a couple of free contests this month. I'm done paying for contests; I'm done paying for a lot of stuff since my husband and I are basically broke. Tomorrow I'll be taking a break from the novel to go into school and grade placement tests; it's only one day a week, and it's a little extra cash, which we could really use. So, my next post will be on Friday; I'm actually really excited to get back to writing on Friday, since I'll be working on a major turning-point scene; the one where we find out What Is Going To Happen.

I have a number of folks (including my husband, Nicole, Sue, Nate and Dillon) who I've said I want to send sections of the novel to, and I do, but I need to get over one more hump first; I still have some floating material from an earlier draft that I'll be placing in this chapter (Chapter 4), and I want to do that before I send it out. By then, it'll be about a hundred pages worth (I hit 95 today), and I'll happily send however much they want (I know Kevin and Nate only want one chapter at a time, but I'd be willing to bet Nicole and Sue, who are monster speed readers, will probably just want the whole thing). It'll be interesting to have people read it, since the only person who has continues to be a literary agent, which is so backwards as to be almost absurd. Anyway, happy Thursday tomorrow, and I'll be back Friday.

Day 13: One Month

It's been a month since my agent meeting on May 5th, when I received words of encouragement on 20 of the 35 pages I had written at the time. Since then, I've written 55 pages, and I'm now about a quarter of the way through page 90.

My second sex scene, which I wrote today, went much better; I'll need maybe to go back and reevaluate that first one. I think this one worked because it's pretty weird (a couple having sex in an empty house that they're thinking of buying). The first one was sort of more garden-variety.

The saga of my apartment complex continues. Out my window today, I watched a group of what I suspect were seventh graders, three boys and two girls, wandering around carrying aluminum baseball bats. One of the girls had a lacrosse stick instead, and the second girl had neither; she was walking a dog, a black cocker spaniel whose poor dark fur was absorbing all of the hot sun and who really needed to go inside for some water. The inevitable began, and the boys started hitting each other with the bats, to figure out, as far as I could tell from their yelling, who was "the shit." I don't think anyone was seriously hurt; they gave it up after a while. At least it's not boring around here.

Day 12: Huge Turtles, My New Chair, and 85 pages

Wrote just about five pages today; I credit my new office chair, which my husband put together for me yesterday, for the extra productivity. The chair is very comfortable and grounding; I wriggle around less than I did on that awful folding chair. A lot of what I wrote was dialogue between one of my main characters and a crazy new-age hospital chaplain (who I think I need to make a little bit crazier), which takes up more space in terms of lines. Some of it is decent, I think, though it will need fine tuning.

It rained here all day, sometimes very heavily. My husband left for work at eight this morning, and called me on his way to the train to tell me that he'd seen a really big turtle right outside of our building. I put on my kickass Target rainboots and went out to see the turtle, and it was indeed enormous. It looked just like this, except you have to imagine it wet. I suspect it was a female, on her way to lay a nest somewhere a bit away from the small pond at our apartment complex where I think she lives. I hope she made it ok.

Whenever it storms really hard, I look at Perogi, and I think about how glad I am that a sweet dog like her has a warm, dry place to live and lots of soft things to nap on. It's a feeling of being pleased that I can offer her a good life, the kind that she deserves. When I was little, my parents felt this way too, I think. They would always say things like "isn't it nice to have a warm home to live in when it's nasty outside," and I would never really understand what they meant; I loved to play in the rain and snow, and had no idea what it was like to not be able to be warm and safe. To use an awful cliche, I think you have to *be* out in the rain to know how nice it is to "come out of the rain." How will I teach my own children about this luxury that they have?

Day 11: 80 Pages and Babies

I got to 80 pages today.

I had to do a lot of research today, though I'm not sure how much of it I want to recollect here. I needed to research miscarriages, and, unfortunately, while in the process of looking for pictures of what a thirteen-week fetus looks like in utero, I encountered a number of pictures of aborted fetuses. These pictures were among the most horrible things I've seen, and I won't soon forget them. I'm pro-choice, and I always will be, but that doesn't mean I'm immune to the sight of a fetus out of the womb before its time.

Seeing the pictures and researching the emotional responses of women who have had miscarriages affected me more than I thought it would; I had to take a break after a while and research something totally unrelated (I job-hunted for my husband). I got my 3.75 pages done, but I have to wonder if what I'm putting this character through is just too much, if it isn't believable. I'm itching to have someone read what I've written so far (other than a literary agent who read 20 pages), but I'm also nervous. I've invested a quarter of my vacation in it so far, so it would be hard for me to hear that it's terrible. I wrote 41 pages in May.

The woman who is pregnant in the building across from me is having a boy in August who they're naming Cory. I stopped short of telling her that I now follow her routine of coming and going every day from my home-office window. I'd say have a good weekend, but I'm fairly certain no one is reading this, so I'll have a good weekend instead, and be back on Monday.